Isle of Man

"Man is an island of Great Britain, in the Irish Sea, about 30 miles in length, and from 8 to 15 in breadth. It is very hilly, and one of its heights exceeds 2,000 feet. It has mines of lead, iron and copper, and quarries of building stone and slate. The soil varies in different tracts, yet produces more corn than is sufficient to maintain the natives. The air, which is sharp and cold in winter, is healthy, and the inhabitants live to a very great age. The commodities of this island are small black cattle and horses, wool, fine and coarse linen, hides, skins, honey, tallow, and herrings. About the rocks of the island breeds an incredible number of all sorts of sea-fowl, and especially on the Calf of Man, a small island not far from its most southerly point. The language is a dialect of Erse. In its civil government, which is peculiar to it, the island is divided into six sheedings, each having its proper coroner, who is entrusted with the peace of his district, and acts in the nature of a sheriff. The House of Keys is its elective legislature, &c. Castle Town is its chief place. Population 47,975."
[Quotation from Barclay's Complete and Universal English Dictionary, 1842]

The IGI for Manx baptisms and marriages is virtually complete and now forms part of the L.D.S. (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) online search facilities. The index entries are linked to online images of the parish registers. Hugh Wallis has provided a search facility which greatly simplifies searching by batch number. See also Finding L.D.S. Batch Numbers.

There are also Parish register copies in the library of the Society of Genealogists. To locate them search by subject for 'Isle of Man' in the library catalogue.

Manx National Heritage has a useful Family history information sheet. This has links to relevant parts of Manx Government web pages, for churches, civil registration, property deeds, probate, and others.

An wealth of genealogical, historical and descriptive material is available on Frances Coakley's A Manx Notebook. The site includes more than 40 Mb of material, much of it being transcriptions of original records.

J. Narasimham. The Manx Family Tree: a Beginners Guide to records in the Isle of Man By Janet Narasimham is available from the Manx Heritage shops(which have a number of other manx history books), at most Island bookshops, or from the Isle of Man Family History Society.

The community website isleofman.com has a genealogy section with a genealogy message board and volunteers offering lookups.

John Fuller has provided full details of the " Manx" Genealogy Mailing List. This is but a small part of the data available on the "Genealogy Resources on the Internet" pages maintained by John and Chris Gaunt.

The Through Mighty Seas website deals with merchant sailing vessels built and owned in the North West of England and the Isle of Man in the 19th Century. This no longer seems to be online but is available through the Internet Archive.

From 1885 all probates were in the High Court of Justice. From 1874 to 1885 the Consistory Court of Sodor was the sole probate court. Prior to that the Consistory Court of Sodor and the Archdeaconry Court of the Isle of Man held jurisdiction for different parts of the year, so both courts should be searched. The Consistory Court records start in 1600 (with an index from 1659) and the Archdeaconry Court from 1631 (all years are indexed).

We are looking for somebody who can help with the maintenance of this page, which currently has a status of Care and maintenance - A maintainer is correcting broken links, but is not active in updating the section's web pages.
For more information about what helping us entails, look at our help wanted page.
If you would like to consider helping us then please contact Andrew Millard.